This I Believe 1

I believe in Love.
   Whether that be the Love of one's family, one's friends, one's spouse, one's religion or beliefs, one's self, or one's country; I believe in it. I believe in that Love; in its creation, its drive, its passion, ambition, and complexity. I believe in all its forms, all its glories, yet all its pains. I believe in nothing greater than the absolute power of Love, for there is none. This is what I believe most in this world.

   Love, in all its occurrences, has confused, bewildered, yet intrigued me, starting from when I was very young. I could never quite get a grip of its meaning or importance in my life; one would expect a child to be misunderstanding to such a concept as Love. But, something happened in the latter of my childhood that opened my mind to new thoughts and provocations to the sense of Love:
   My father, being a man of great confusion to me ever since, died in a car accident late November of 2000.
   Death was and is probably the hardest concept to understand as a young child. To be quite honest, it's harder than hell to understand that the person you saw to be your father is gone, dead, and never coming back.
   So what? That's it? No second chances? We die and we're gone forever? WHAT'S THAT ALL ABOUT?!?
   It took some time and a few more deaths in the family for me to fully understand this part of Love, Death. There is a certain Love for the dead though; their memory, their legacy, lives on in our Love for them after their passing. As long as we remember them and feel their presence in our hearts, they are never gone from this world.
   I Love my father, even though I never really knew him completely as a person, I Love him, my mother Loves him, his family Loves him, and he will live on forever in our hearts and minds.

  
   Let's fast forward through a couple years and stop in the summer of 2008, my first Love.
   We went to high school together; she was a year younger than I, but that didn't matter to us. I had just broken off a relationship with a former crush that I had lost feelings for and she had done the same. We had always been friends, especially through the school's chorale group which we were both participants in, so being together was natural to us.
A few flirts here and there, our first kiss, a moment, that's all it took, we were together. In Love.
We were each others firsts for a lot of different things; nobody knew us like we knew us.
The next year and a half was the best time in my life. I Loved her, my better half. We were, for lack of a better word, inseparable. It seemed like we were meant to be, we had everything in common; we had the same tastes, same interests, same personalities, it was absolutely incredible to me. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.
   Things change.

   What happened in the last part of our relationship, what I eventually found to take place in most relationships, is that one of the people changed, she did. I changed too, but she changed more, differently than I did.
We had grown apart, lost connections, lost common interests and goals; we grew up.
We were not special, we were not meant to be. Our dreams, our plans, would never happen; they died when we ended.
   It's a pain that most of us have to experience and eventually get over; I'm still in the process. But, we learn from it, we discover some things about ourselves, and grow.
How did I grow? I discovered Love; true, undeniable, Love. My first, my only, my last? Who knows. But I found it; and I know what it is and how it feels to have it. If that isn't an achievement, then I don't know what is. Sure it ended badly, we're not exactly acquaintances anymore; but hey, you know what?, I'd take the pain and sorrow any day, I'd give everything up, just to go back and do it all over again. I regret nothing and I wouldn't have it any other way.
 
   It's all because of Love, my Love; the Love I've received and the Love I have given. Love makes the world go 'round. Most of the time it's wonderful, but sometimes you have to take it with a grain of salt, grit your teeth, and power through.
   Love comes back to us, it always does. This I believe.